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Trademarks - The dinosaur in the room

"But it was Bob Young who transformed Red Hat into a
brand. For the first months and years Young worked "in my wife's
sewing closet in Connecticut, and Marc in a spare room in his
apartment in Durham (North Carolina)." Ewing built the software,
and Young distributed the brand, giving away CDs and selling hats
and t-shirts, and within six years of its first release the company
went public with a valuation upwards of 5 billion dollars - which
wasn't bad for a company whose sole purpose was to make and sell
free software. Bob Young, incidentally, has three versions of 'The
Hat' story and a video of him telling all three is available on the
Red Hat website.

"According to Jon 'maddog' Hall "By the time people recognised
what (Young) was doing it was too late. He had built the Red Hat
brand to the point where a lot of people in the US would say 'Red
Hat is Linux, and Linux is Red Hat'. Like Kleenex and tissues, and
Heinz and ketchup, Red Hat had become a generic term. Bob Young did
an amazing job... He would say, 'Hey, give away the software, and
sell the t-shirts and hats' but what he really meant was: 'Give
away the software, and sell the services.'""